and the relentless buffeting of the waves, their distracted mother clasping them by the hand long after life was extinct. To a terrible day succeeded a yet more terrible night. “Scarce the cliffs of the islets, scarce the walls of Joyous Gard Flash to sight between the deadlier lightnings of the sea; Storm is lord and master of a midnight evil-starred, Nor may sight nor fear discern what evil stars may be.” Until the morning they endured; and in the stormy dawn the keeper of the Longstone lighthouse, William Darling, and his daughter Grace saw them huddled in a shivering heap upon the wave-swept fragments of the wreck. The girl begged her father to try to save them, and to allow her to help in the task, and after some natural hesitation he consented. The brave-hearted mother helped them to launch the boat, and they set forth. [Illustration: The Wreck of the “Forfarshire”] “Sire and daughter, hand on oar and face against the night. Maid and man whose names are beacons ever to the north. ...... all the madness of the stormy surf Hounds and roars them back, but roars and hounds them back in vain. Not our mother, not Northumberland, brought ever forth. Though no southern shore may match the sons that kiss her mouth, Children worthier all the birthright given of the ardent north, Where the fire of hearts outburns the suns that fire the south.” They reached the rock, where nine persons were still clinging to the wreck, and “Life by life the man redeems them, head by storm-worn head, While the girl’s hand stays the boat whereof the waves are fain.” With five of the exhausted survivors the boat returned to the Longstone; and two of the men went back with William Darling for the other four. All were safely housed in the lighthouse and tended by the noble family of the Darlings; but the storm raged for several days longer, and made it impossible for them to be put ashore. When at length they returned to their homes, and the story of the rescue was made known, the whole country was moved by it; and presents of all kinds, money, and offers of marriage poured in upon Grace, who remained quite unmoved by it all, and was still the gentle unassuming girl that she had always been. She refused to leave her home, though she was offered twenty pounds a night at the Adelphi if she would consent merely to sit in a boat for London audiences to gaze upon her. Sad to say, she died of consumption about two years afterwards, after having tried in vain to arrest the course of her sickness by change of air at Wooler and Alnwick; and she sleeps in Bamburgh churchyard, within sound of the sea by which she had spent her short life. “East and west and south acclaim her queen of England’s maids. Star more sweet than all their stars, and flower than all their flowers.”